Watching television is an everyday activity in a large number of households, and provides for a source of entertainment for a range of program content such as sport and movies, as well as news and actuality programs (eg. documentaries and lifestyle).
Traditionally, a viewer would consult a printed television schedule listing in a local newspaper or periodical to find a desirable program to watch. More recently, entertainment program guides have been made available in electronic form via the Internet or World Wide Web. However, with the introduction of satellite receivers for television and cable television, the number of television channels available to the viewer has increased dramatically. This has made the task of selecting a television program to watch using either printed program listings or on-screen Electronic Program Guides (EPG) very involved and time consuming.
Program listings that are ordered by characteristics including category, time or performers, can assist the viewer in making a selection, but such remains a time consuming task. Typically, there may only be a few programs of interest to the viewer out of the vast number of available programs.
Systems are available that monitor those categories of programs a viewer most frequently watches and to provide recommendations based on the most frequently watched category. Such arrangements suffer from the disadvantage of simply selecting a single program characteristic (such as category) from previously watched programs and making recommendations based on this selected program characteristic. However, selection by the viewer may depend on various characteristics and even combinations of characteristics. Furthermore, exactly how these characteristics and combinations of characteristics are joined for use in making the selection is highly individual for each user and prior art systems do not provide this level of flexibility.